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New Smartphone Releases
· Samsung’s latest Galaxy A phones arrived in the US this week: the popular Galaxy A52, along with A42, A12, and the A02 — but no A72. The A52 5G goes for $500.
· Also, the first Galaxy S21 FE renders emerged, looking very close to a vanilla S21, but without an accented rear camera module, and 6.4-inch size over the S21's 6.2-inch. August release?
· HMD Global has overhauled the Nokia phone line to include just three series: X, G, and C. G is true mid-range, but Nokia's new top-spec X is far from flagship level, while the C range is pretty basic. While there's no longer a flagship range, this at least makes more sense than the decimal point numbers for the series names.
· Lenovo’s second-gen Legion gaming phone launched packing dual cooling fans and a super divisive design. There's a pop-up camera, which is cool, but only for landscape photos? Whacky!
· Even Apple is losing out to the global chip supply crunch: MacBook and iPad production delayed as supply crunch hits (Nikkei).
· 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data leaked (Insider). Facebook waved its hand and said it wouldn't notify the people who had their data stolen because...
· Google Pixel 6 will debut Google’s long-rumored custom smartphone silicon, codenamed “Whitechapel,” ditching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon built on Samsung’s System Large-scale Integration (SLSI) division.
· Google is taking on Apple’s processing dominance, raising intriguing possibilities for a Google-led mobile application processor.
o Google isn’t gearing up to beat Apple’s custom CPUs
o Google’s Whitechapel SoC will not be more powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Apple’s A14 Bionic. At least in the CPU and GPU departments.
o Google will be picking most of its parts off the shelf and therefore the bulk of its core processing components will almost certainly arrive in the form of familiar Arm Cortex and Mali components.
o Since Samsung ditched its Mongoose CPUs and Google doesn’t have a dedicated mobile CPU development team to build a competitive Arm-based core of its own, but Google has a few chip-design staff onboard, these are spread around the company.
o Qualcomm recently brought Nuvia to help it build custom-Arm CPUs. Google hasn’t made anything like this size of investment to help catch Apple.
Google is opting for a tried and tested tri-cluster CPU setup. Could be a Cortex-X1, A78, and A55, but could comprise two A78 or A78 and A76 performance tiers if cost and area efficiency are more important to Google’s design objectives. Google has no in-house mobile graphics division. It’s highly unlikely that Samsung will share the fruits of its AMD RDNA graphics partnership before it debuts in its own Exynos chipset in 2022. Instead, an off-the-shelf Arm Mali-G78 or newer seems the most likely, but Mali has historically underperformed against Qualcomm’s Adreno. An Imagination Technologies GPU is also possible.
· Facebook hinted at a similar strategy, but directed at AR headsets
TCL debuted the TCL 20 series, its follow up to the TCL 10 series, and adding on to the previously launched TCL 20 and 20 SE. The highlight of the TCL 20 series is the TCL 20 Pro, including:
· A 6.67-inch flat AMOLED display, with quad-lens mainly featuring a 48MP main shooter, and 16MP wide-angle, 5MP macro and depth sensor.
· Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset with 5G support, 6GB RAM/256GB storage, and a 4,500mAh battery, with extras like microSD slot and 3.5mm headphone jack.
· An LCD, for the 20L, no quad-cam setup, and a budget-oriented Snapdragon 662, without 5G.
TCL is rolling this out widely, but it is starting sales in some parts of Europe first at €549 (~$657). The 20SE is priced at €269 (~$322), while the weaker again TCL 20L, which cuts back on camera and RAM, goes for €229 (~$274).
Getting more attention is TCL’s latest concept device: a phone, phablet, and tablet all at the same time. The 3-in-1 prototype adds a rollable element to a foldable.
· Samsung’s latest Galaxy A phones arrived in the US this week: the popular Galaxy A52, along with A42, A12, and the A02 — but no A72. The A52 5G goes for $500.
· Also, the first Galaxy S21 FE renders emerged, looking very close to a vanilla S21, but without an accented rear camera module, and 6.4-inch size over the S21's 6.2-inch. August release?
· HMD Global has overhauled the Nokia phone line to include just three series: X, G, and C. G is true mid-range, but Nokia's new top-spec X is far from flagship level, while the C range is pretty basic. While there's no longer a flagship range, this at least makes more sense than the decimal point numbers for the series names.
· Lenovo’s second-gen Legion gaming phone launched packing dual cooling fans and a super divisive design. There's a pop-up camera, which is cool, but only for landscape photos? Whacky!
· Even Apple is losing out to the global chip supply crunch: MacBook and iPad production delayed as supply crunch hits (Nikkei).
· 533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data leaked (Insider). Facebook waved its hand and said it wouldn't notify the people who had their data stolen because...
· Google Pixel 6 will debut Google’s long-rumored custom smartphone silicon, codenamed “Whitechapel,” ditching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon built on Samsung’s System Large-scale Integration (SLSI) division.
· Google is taking on Apple’s processing dominance, raising intriguing possibilities for a Google-led mobile application processor.
o Google isn’t gearing up to beat Apple’s custom CPUs
o Google’s Whitechapel SoC will not be more powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Apple’s A14 Bionic. At least in the CPU and GPU departments.
o Google will be picking most of its parts off the shelf and therefore the bulk of its core processing components will almost certainly arrive in the form of familiar Arm Cortex and Mali components.
o Since Samsung ditched its Mongoose CPUs and Google doesn’t have a dedicated mobile CPU development team to build a competitive Arm-based core of its own, but Google has a few chip-design staff onboard, these are spread around the company.
o Qualcomm recently brought Nuvia to help it build custom-Arm CPUs. Google hasn’t made anything like this size of investment to help catch Apple.
Google is opting for a tried and tested tri-cluster CPU setup. Could be a Cortex-X1, A78, and A55, but could comprise two A78 or A78 and A76 performance tiers if cost and area efficiency are more important to Google’s design objectives. Google has no in-house mobile graphics division. It’s highly unlikely that Samsung will share the fruits of its AMD RDNA graphics partnership before it debuts in its own Exynos chipset in 2022. Instead, an off-the-shelf Arm Mali-G78 or newer seems the most likely, but Mali has historically underperformed against Qualcomm’s Adreno. An Imagination Technologies GPU is also possible.
· Facebook hinted at a similar strategy, but directed at AR headsets
TCL debuted the TCL 20 series, its follow up to the TCL 10 series, and adding on to the previously launched TCL 20 and 20 SE. The highlight of the TCL 20 series is the TCL 20 Pro, including:
· A 6.67-inch flat AMOLED display, with quad-lens mainly featuring a 48MP main shooter, and 16MP wide-angle, 5MP macro and depth sensor.
· Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset with 5G support, 6GB RAM/256GB storage, and a 4,500mAh battery, with extras like microSD slot and 3.5mm headphone jack.
· An LCD, for the 20L, no quad-cam setup, and a budget-oriented Snapdragon 662, without 5G.
TCL is rolling this out widely, but it is starting sales in some parts of Europe first at €549 (~$657). The 20SE is priced at €269 (~$322), while the weaker again TCL 20L, which cuts back on camera and RAM, goes for €229 (~$274).
Getting more attention is TCL’s latest concept device: a phone, phablet, and tablet all at the same time. The 3-in-1 prototype adds a rollable element to a foldable.
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Barry Young
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